Blog Post

Google’s Jabber is Alive, works with iChat AV

Mini Review: Just had a nice chat with Jon Gales using the iChat client, and it worked perfectly. The quality of sound was great and had no feedback or anything of the sort using Powerbook’s built in Mic and speakers. Anyone have screen shots of the official GTalk application, which I believe is for Windows only. You can get it here.

Still, an hour or so later, I am wondering why I need another Voice-over-IM client, given that I don’t use the ones that I have right now as much. I think Yahoo+DialPad makes more sense. When AOL does AIM-Plus-Voice-to-the-Phone, I may use it more. Still, Google has dipped its toes in voice waters, and it will be good to see what future enhancements they come-up with. For now, Skype has nothing to worry about except its own lack of supersonic growth.

Danny Sullivan, the real Search Engine guru is not impressed and writes, “Heck, Google Talk doesn’t even feature a box to let you search for things, as rival products from AOL and Yahoo do.” My full analysis later!

A lot of people are talking via Jabber server that is sitting on talk.google.com. I have been IMed by multiple sources who are in the process of setting up their Jabber clients. I have reports on Gaim, Adium and iChat being able to communicate via Jabber/Google Talk. You can sign-in using your Google ID which is your gmail address and password. I am having a tough time getting it up and running because of firewall issues.

It’s unfortunate to hear Google Talk compared to other platforms, when there simply is no comparison. Google Talk uses _standards_ instead of proprietary procols, like the others. It uses Jabber for test, and Jingle for voice. With many IM clients already supporting Jabber, and a few in the process of adding Jingle support, this means you can have _choice_ of which client you want to use.

Google Talk has progress to be made, but it is fundmantally more robust than competing products. Jingle will quite likely beat out SIP (session initiation protocol) as the standard for VoIP, as it is easier to implement, and is better with firewalls.

The fact that Google created an IM/Voice client and the fact that is based on Jabber are the main things to take from this launch.
They probably went to market earlier than they would like, but then again, why not let the market decide what it wants?
Read the blogs, the wishlist has already been provided and Google can bring its resources to bear on putting them in the product.
Integration with Desktop 2 is bound to come and perhaps with some of the other products Google has in it’s stable.
Skype has lost momentum by developing video when it was clear that someone else was doing it. Delaying the introduction of Skype video would not have had much impact, and they could have focused on improving the basic platform. It could be a costly mistake.

1) Unless this has some compelling community-based feature beyond simple IM chat, why on earth is anyone going to use it? Apart from letting me use my GMail identity, what’s to be gained?

2) Google is pretty naive if they think that Yahoo! et al will be interested in opening their networks for Google’s exploitation as a network-based equivalent of Trillian (which is what Jabber was originally intended to be) by federating IM identity. If YahOo! and MSN and AOL couldn’t agree to open their networks and federate to each other, why should they want to do the same to GoOgle, an even more threatening entity?

3) This would be great in a world where Skype et al did not exist, but even then its value to Google’s core business is questionable.

Disclaimer: Obviously this is just a beta, and not the endgame, but Google had better get a lot smarter about understanding the viral and community dynamics driving IM and VoIP and figuring out how they would monetize such a service in the long haul, otherwise this could be a very expensive expedition that gets them nowhere. Voice service are not the kind of thing you can “just throw out there”.

Not that impressed with Google Talk. With all the players in the space, wouldn’t have made sense to build in features that were at least in parity with what is out there or introduce features that are deemed more revolutionary?

The voice over IM is nice and the interoperability is great, but it’s not going to make me switch from the client I use now. My friends are already tapped out and just see invites to these additional late services as spam.

Every time Eric Schmidt and the rest of the Google gang go the bathroom, are we supposed to jump for joy? There’s nothing new to Jabber (its been around for many years now). I say this is a non-event so its time to take nap … Zzzzzzz